Wishlist: High level design thoughts

[Gregstrom]

Re: Specialisation.
I'm not sure tech levels decrease in cost in RL. Maybe in relative cost, but probably not in absolute terms. Did creating the steam engine cost more money than the jet engine? I suspect not. As a % of GDP, maybe steam cost more. One of the reason tech costs grow in games is to (partiually) balance out economic growth, so you have to keep allocating roughly the same percentage of your nation's resources to keep up a similar rate of research.

Re: Uncertainty. I quite liked the MOO/MOO2 uncertainty factor. You paid the list price and had a small chance of working out the tech, then the odds of discovery increased with further investment. It was better for SP than MP though, as the luck factor could really mess you up.

[MattII]

Okay, this isn't my idea, it belongs to a friend over on spaceempires.net who's having trouble with activating his account here and asked me if I could post it for him.

Originally Posted by Central_Speaker_Dan

the tech tree in all games is very linear. You (the designers) mentioned something about scripted visibility requirements for the upcoming tech level however this still creates a one track tech tree.
Would it be possible to create a scripted requirements list for the tech levels. I am reasonably sure that in reality we have not discovered a vast variety of possible technologies because they are incompatible with our existing technologies. Equally different races would do things at different speeds and in different ways.
Here's a good example: Brunel (a British Engineer) developed an alternate track gauge that was more fuel efficient, comfortable and faster than the one used at the time for trains. He built all his own train tracks to this gauge including the Edinburgh to London line.
When he died the other train companies either had to change to his tracks, which would have meant re-building the whole industry, or keep to what the rest of the country was already using, which was less efficient.
They chose to keep the original track because it was cheaper.
As such 'Brunel's Train Tech' was made more costly the more 'UK Train Tech' you have in use.
Could this sort of thing not be added to a game?

[Gregstrom]

Infrastructure upgrade costs? MOO1 had those.

[MattII]

Actually, a better analogy would be the fact that in 1900 cars were powered by batteries or steam as often as petrol.

In a more general sense, he'd like to see a tech-tree where there are, in some cases, two or more competing technologies covering a single area (propulsion for example could be provided either by a fast-but-inefficient engine, or a slow-but-efficient one, or a fast-and-efficient-but-expensive-and-delicate one).

[Gregstrom]

A lot of games with component level ship design have some of that. Stars! had nice efficient slower engines coexisting with fast thirsty ones.

[MattII]

Oh right. Most of my experience is with the Space-Empires line, which doesn't have such, beyond perhaps weapons, although I suppose with the modifiability of the game...

[MattII]

Ah, seems I misunderstood.

Originally Posted by Central_Speaker_Dan

Look at it this way:
If I researched Photon Pulse Weapons (whatever they are...) then it will cost me less to develop Photon Torpedo Weapons because I already have much of the basic knowledge.

On the other hand if I develop technologies that use Neutrinos (a sub-atomic particle) It will cost me a lot lot more to research technologies using Anti-Neutrinos because if they aren't separated properly they would annihilate, rendering BOTH devices useless.
In fact it may not even be possible to use both in one civilisation therefore if I have one I CANNOT research the other at all.

[Gregstrom]

I like that idea, as it adds to strategic choices in the game. Perhaps the choices should be something in the line of 'I can research this weapon tech at the expense of closing this area of stardrive research'. That way it's harder to min/max than a choice between two different guns.

[Central_Speaker_Dan]

Ideally, nearly every tech, in some small way, would effect nearly every other tech.
I know that this is a hell of a lot of work to do at this late stage and may well need mass reconstruction of the tech tree/s and total re-balancing so you don't need to work your socks off trying to fulfil the concept.

Had I known of this sooner I would have posted and it would have saved you a very large amount of work (depending on how far you actually are).

Anyway, I am very pleased that you like the idea.
Good luck and thank you,
Dan.

[Gregstrom]

By the way, I'm not part of the dev team. I just like discussing the game.